'Doomsday clock' ticks closer to apocalyptic midnight

I'm not sure how you don't just laugh at people taking this "doomsday clock" nonsense seriously. It's an arbitrary thing and based on opinion, not fact. You could set the thing to 4:20 permanently and it wouldn't say anything more or anything less about the current global situation.

 

You don't trust the world's most prominent rocket scientists and nuclear physicists?

The Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists is a pretty respectable journal, and it's designed to inform the general public. Past contributors included people like Einstein, Oppenheimer, and Bertrand Russell. That they needed a metaphor to try to explain a very unpleasant fact to the population of Earth shouldn't be offensive.

I don't know if you've noticed, but most people aren't terribly smart and need visual aids.

 

I absolutely trust them when it comes to rocket science or nuclear physics.....but the clock BS isn't really related to rocket science or nuclear physics now is it?

 

The clock is a gimmick to explain a state, like triage color tags, DEFCON levels, HURCON, or this thing:



There's nothing scientific about those scales (except maybe HURCON because it is based on weather reports) but they communicate what they need to without requiring a press conference. So yes, the clock measures the subjective assessment of a body of scientists on the likelihood of a nuclear war or other civilization-threatening event. I trust it better than I do Homeland Security's terror attack assessment.

 

The problem is that it's scientists doing things outside of their expertise....which essentially means you have amateurs just stating an opinion. There's no reason to give any more credence to their opinion than anyone else's.

I mean, I'll take it over a hobo screaming at a bus stop, but it's not inherently more valid than that.

 

I am guessing that whomever you're trying to talk with does not deserve this good post of yours.

The main problem w the " clock" is calibration. They are obviously correct that the world is at greater risk this year, but they started too damned close to midnight. LOL. #roomtomaneuver

 

Yeah, this. I thought the Hawaii false alarm was a good wakeup call even if it was terrifying for Hawaiians.

Maybe it's the fact that there are still people who remember the USSR and the fire drills little kids had to do, which when you think about it would probably not have done a gat dam thing vs a thermonuclear warhead...

 

This is a team of political analyists, nuclear engineers and scientists.

Yes, I take their word over your average high school graduate such as yourself.

 

No, it is absolutely not that. It's basically a public-policy think tank with a focus on international relations wrt nuclear arms and nuclear power.

 

It's either a group of nuclear physicists and rocket scientists weighing in on things outside their area of expertise or it's not a group of nuclear physicists and rocket scientists. It really has to be one or the other and I'm fine with either scenario.

 

Ugh. Literally the first line from their Mission Statement begins: The Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists engages science leaders, policy makers...

 

So then it's "Atomic Scientists" speaking outside their area of expertise.

 

I just read two articles and the wiki page about these people and their history.

Who or what group or body of people in your opinion would be informed to speak on this?

 

Bobbythegreat and his high school degree of course.

 

They may very well be informed, my point was that being a group of rocket scientists and nuclear physicists doesn't give them any more credibility on the issue given that their expertise is not in international politics. A group of plumbers may be very well informed when it comes to air conditioning, but their opinion on air conditioning isn't any more valid due to their expertise when it comes to plumbing. You get what I'm saying?

 

The educational requirements to become a nuclear engineer or physicist tells me more about their baseline critical thinking skills and their overall intelligence than someone who completed the training requirements to become a plumber.

 

Ok that’s great. But again, who is then is as qualified or more qualified than this group?

 

Those who specialize in international politics rather than in other fields. That doesn't mean that the group of physicists and rocket scientists are wrong though, it just means that their status as rocket scientists and physicists doesn't inherently give them credibility in this field. You could take a group of CF posters and create a nuclear clock and it wouldn't be inherently inferior to the one talked about in this thread assuming the CF posters took it seriously.

 

Your platitudes kinda prove you didn't take one second to see what type of proffesional were included in this panel. Hint: poltical scientists were invloved.